San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1887-02-10
A POET.JOURNALIST.
A Brief Sketch OF the Late +. Ii.
PlimptOn's Poems.

Oue VI tuu uioSl cApuiHito pooho VI 'ho
holiday season was tho volume containing u
collection of poems by the late Florus B.
Plimpton. He died last spring at the COM
paratively early age of SO. He was born
in Ohio, and had been newspaper editor
since he was 81. For twenty-five years be-
fore his death he had been on the staff of
The Cincinnati Commercial and The Com
mercial Gazette, which succeeded it.
If Florus Plimpton had beon rich man
he would have been ono of tho foremost
poets of his time. As it was, his flying Pc
gasus had to be harnessod to the cart horse
drudgery of daily newspaper. That is his
whole story. He died before his time, with
the best part of his genius unexpressed.
For such thwarted life there must be OK
preston sometime and somewhere. II can
not be otherwise.
Such poems Ms he left camo to him most
ly in the night, when he was restless md
wakeful, and he noted them down. Some
times he printed them, sometimes not. Af-
ter he died Mrs. Plimpton gathered such
as she could find and published them in n
beautiful book. Mr.. Mu,at Halstead, with
whom the dead had been associated for q
quarter century, wrote IN eloquent intro
ductiop. One or two newspaper friends, of
the very few who knew the intense, stead
fast nature rs it was, contributed some
words of appreciation and tender regret.
Artists who had known him, and some who
had their first kindly encouragement from
line he wrote, made pictures illustrating
the poems. ii. Il. FNrny, Niehaus, the
sculptor; Henry Mosler, e. ID. Grafton, @.
T. Webber, Valentine, Misses Clara New
ton and Laura Fry are among them. From
far Berlin Professor Hans Gude, tho mas
ter, sends also his pictures to gid tho book
containing the poems of Florus Piimpton.
His wife, herself gifted artist and writer,
added graceful and appropriate pictures.
And so, from under the hands of those
who knew and loved him, comes this souve-
mir of the dend poet-journalist. The volume
is published by Mrs. Plimpton, at Cincin-
nati.
The poems are of various lengths. long
and short. They speak tender nearness
to nature in all her handiworSs. There is
q woodsman's fondness for tho trees and
sunshine, poets kinship to tho sky, the
clouds, the birds and waters. Yet through
il all there runs n vein OF weird questioning
of the deeper forces of life and nature that
at times is very striking.
One of the longest as woll as the best
known OF the poems is 'Lewis Wetzel."
the story of a mighty pioneer hunter. 1t
begins:
Stout hearted Lewis Wetzel
Rides down the river shore,
The wilderness behind him
And the Wilderness before.
He rides in the cool of morning,
Humming a dear old tune,
Into the heart of the greenwood,
Into the henrt of June.
Here is one in different vein. I re-
member well how it originated in an anus
ing circumstance That happened in the old
Commercial Office:
THE BROWN CHICKADEE.
FABLE.
In the top of an oal; sat n brown chickadeo:
1t seemed but speck for the height OF the
tree;
And it chirruped and twittered, till straight
way it saw
Through the green leaves the forms of n
dove aud n daw.
Then it futtered its wings, and it puffed
ont its breast,
And the feathers stood up from its tail to
its crest
"Thc importinent jadcs!" in It's anger it
cried,
''Do they think that with them this fine
tree I'll divide?
They shall see know how to resent, though
I'm small,
And tree good for one will not do for MS
ALL"
So he hoped from his perch, did the brown
chickadee.
And left them alone on the limb of the
tree
All unconscious the dove, and my story
grows sad.
For the daw never dreamed that the tit
mouse was mad!
MORAL:
II augered by what others do, and would
show it,
Be sure that you act so the others will know
it.
Here is yet another and still different 7
am sure every heart alive viii echo the
prayer contained in il:
A RETROSPECT.
Backward DER the past look